A mainframe computing system is a type of computer or computing system that is often used to perform critical applications that require substantial processing power. For example, mainframe computing systems may be used to process large, bulk data sets (e.g., taxes, census data, monetary transactions, weather patterns).
Historically, the term mainframe derives from the large cabinets used to house the processing units and memory of early computers. Today, the term is often used to distinguish high end more powerful computing systems from other less powerful computing systems. mainframe computing systems provide significant processing power and support substantial throughput. As a result, there is a need for redundant engineering and high reliability in mainframe systems.
Mainframe computing systems are conventionally backed up using magnetic tape libraries. Tape libraries are quite slow. As a result, the manner in which mainframe computing systems are backed up is changing. For example, some mainframe computing systems are backed up to disk storage devices.
This process, however, has introduced various problems into the backup operations. With a change in the backup technology, there is a corresponding change in the communication protocols. In fact, in order to backup a mainframe computing system using disk storage devices, it is necessary to interconnect a large number of distinct hardware devices. This large number of hardware devices is expensive and difficult to manage.
FIG. 1, for example, illustrates the complexity of interconnected hardware devices needed to backup a mainframe computing system. In addition to the hardware expense and structural complexity shown in FIG. 1, conventional backup systems have a parallel management system that must interface with all of the devices involved in the backup operation. The complexity of the hardware arrangement and the complexity of the management system makes it difficult to maintain the backup systems and severely complicates troubleshooting problems that arise. Systems and methods for backing up mainframe computing systems are needed.